Murders are at a 60-year low, but San Franciscans are fed up — and inured to data
by JOE RIVANO BARROS SEPTEMBER 26, 2024 (MissionLocal.org)
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Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.
Mayor London Breed has repeated it often on the campaign trail: Enough with the naysayers and doom loopers — San Francisco is on the up-and-up. Crime is down to its lowest levels, encampments are dwindling, night markets and downtown drinking and sports teams are coming to the city. It’s morning again in the city by the bay.
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She said as much again on Tuesday morning speaking to KQED host Alexis Madrigal on the radio station’s flagship program, Forum, touting “one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country.”
The statistics back the mayor up: Crime rose slightly in 2021 and 2022 after a post-pandemic dip, but fell again in 2023. So far this year, it has continued falling double digits — reported crime is down 32 percent, according to the San Francisco Police Department. Violent crime is down 14 percent, while property crime is down 34 percent.
The worst of the worst is also down to a decades low: As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week, homicides are on track for a 60-year low. If this year’s murder trend continues, the Chronicle noted, we would see 34 homicides by the end of the year, the lowest number since the 30 the city recorded in 1960 when it had 100,000 fewer residents.
In the 1970s, the city routinely saw over 120 murders a year. In the 1980s, often over 100. Even in the early 2000s, between 60 and 100 people were killed every year.
But it’s not clear residents are listening — and Breed herself may shoulder some of that blame.
Poll after poll finds that San Franciscans are dissatisfied with the state of crime in the city. Residents feel less safe than they have in 20 years, they say crime is getting worse, and they have given the city a C+ for safety, according to San Francisco’s own government survey from 2023 — the lowest safety rating in a decade.
The voter revolt helped bring down the city’s first progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, and the irony of Breed now touting crime statistics when she downplayed their importance during the recall was not lost on Boudin’s backers.
“I think that if London Breed loses, the recall will have taken out two politicians,” said Jim Ross, a political strategist who served as the campaign manager for Boudin during his 2022 recall fight.
“She drove a narrative that Chesa Boudin was to blame for the crime issues in San Francisco, creating the environment for the recall,” he said. “Her famous press conference where she said this bullshit needs to stop — she very much drove this line and this narrative that crime was out of control and it’s Chesa Boudin’s fault.”
On Dec. 14, 2021, calling for one of many crackdowns in the Tenderloin, Breed said residents should be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.” Three days later, she told a New York Times reporter “The data doesn’t matter when somebody randomly walks up to you who is on crystal meth and socks you in the face and puts you in the hospital.” About a month later, during a press conference on a rising number of killings and other statistics, she said “Statistics really don’t matter when you’re a victim.”
But now, they matter mightily to her campaign. Can she have it both ways?
“When London Breed benefitted from creating a San Francisco doom loop narrative, she was the chief sponsor and amplifier of that narrative,” added Eric Jaye, a longtime campaign strategist who is working on an independent political action committee for Breed’s rival, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.
This election, like the races nationally and like the political temperament across the country, is about emotions more than statistics, Jaye said. “Vibes and feelings do drive votes,” he said. “If it’s a break-in, it’s breaking news … [so] it’s pretty hard to tell voters that everything is safe.”
Breed, for her part, does this — she has acknowledged in public appearances that perception matters. In front of a law-and-order crowd back in July, during the StopCrimeSF mayoral debate, she said “I know that numbers don’t mean anything if you don’t feel safe, and that we have a lot more work to do.”
Her campaign spokesperson, Joe Arellano, added that it went beyond perception, and spoke to a level of amity between the mayor’s office, DA, and police chief. “It’s not just about the data. It’s about the level of coordination, the new resources, and the renewed focus on accountability that is driving the data,” wrote Arellano.
Breed talked about that coordination in her discussion on KQED, pointing to new police drones, automated license plate readers, law enforcement surveillance, and coordination with federal and state agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the California Highway Patrol, the National Guard. “I will tell you that it is making a difference, even though we know it’s not where we want it to be.”
Meanwhile residents — and campaign rivals — are not letting up.
During last week’s KQED and San Francisco Chronicle mayoral debate, two of Breed’s rivals effectively said “Facts be damned” when Breed pointed out reductions in crime and used her well-worn campaign line that her opponents are trying to take the city backwards.
“If you believe those stats, I got a bridge to sell you,” retorted Mark Farrell. Said District 11 Supervisor Ahsha Safaí: “To consistently tell people crime is down is gaslighting.” Farrell and Daniel Lurie, in particular, have emphasized the failure of incumbent leadership on the campaign trail, pointing particularly to public safety.
And on Monday night out in the tony Forest Hill neighborhood during a District 7 supervisorial debate, Mission Local Managing Editor Joe Eskenazi underscored to the tough-on-crime challengers to Supervisor Myrna Melgar that crime is down double digits in the police precincts covering the area.
He was shouted down.
“That’s not real!” an audience member yelled, as Eskenazi attempted to ask “Do facts not matter anymore?” The naysayers would not be swayed.
“Stop trying to fact-check,” another said.
MORE FIELD NOTES FROM THE MAYOR’S RACE
See how they run: Farrell pitches law and order at St. John’s, longtime progressive church
See how they run: Breed and Farrell’s attacks overshadow mayoral debate
See how they run: What Mark Farrell would do in his first 100 days as mayor
JOE RIVANO BARROSSENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, spent his early childhood in Chile, and moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time at YIMBY Action and as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023.More by Joe Rivano Barros
